“I understand your problem, but you are asking me to abandon my entire philosophy, my reason for existence, and delve back into the past we have completely rejected.”

“You would be knocking on the door. I would be the one passing through.”

“You are attempting to differentiate the entire act into degrees. That is not applicable. Any act of renunciation is ultimate.”

“How can helping others be renunciation of yourself?”

“It is the method, as you very well know, friend Gore.”

“How do you think your ancestors would respond to this request? Their generosity helped other species before, when you isolated the Prime aliens.”

“I cannot know, but I suspect they would reanimate the machine for you.”

“Exactly.”

“But they are gone. And they were an aberration in our true line of evolution.”

“Your inaction means you’d be killing trillions of living things. Doesn’t that bother you in the slightest?”

“It is a cause for concern.”

The Delivery Man stiffened. That was the first time the slightest concession had been made to reasonableness on Tyzak’s part. Reasonableness on human terms, anyway.

“The space fortresses that guard your solar system, the cities that never decay, this machine beneath our feet which slumbers, all these things were left behind by the ancestors you dismiss. They wanted you to have options; that is why they bequeathed them to you. So much of what they had is now dust.” Gore’s hand waved loosely up at the lustrous band of debris orbiting the planet. “But these specific artifacts remain because they knew that one day you might need them. Without the fortresses many species would be here plundering the riches your ancestors left behind. A large part of evolution is interaction. Isolation is not evolution; it is stagnation.”

“We are not isolated,” Tyzak answered. “We live within the planet’s will; our every second is determined by the planet. It will deliver us to our destiny.”

“But I’ve shown you what will happen to your planet if the Void’s final expansion phase begins. It will be destroyed, and you with it. That is not natural; that is an external event of pure malice, the cessation of evolution not just here but on every star system in the galaxy. Such a thing cannot be factored into your belief of planetary-guided evolution, for it is not inborn. If you truly wish to continue your evolution on this world, you have to protect it. Your ancestors left you the ability to do that, to ward off the unnatural. You don’t have to do anything other than ask the machine to awake. It and I will do everything else.”

The Delivery Man held his breath.

“Very well,” Tyzak said. “I will ask.”

Gore tipped his head back to look the old Anomine directly in the eye and sighed. “I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

The Delivery Man hurried over to the two of them. Dusk had fallen now, its fading light bathing the plaza in a cool gray illumination. All around them the imposing city buildings were responding to oncoming night with their own internal radiance. Pale colorful streaks shimmered over an igloo-style shelter they’d expanded close to the parked starship where the replicator had been set up. The second, smaller shelter housed the intrusion apparatus Gore had created in case the elevation mechanism proved reluctant.

Last Throw’s smartcore reported that it was initiating a deep field function scan of the elevation mechanism, mapping out functions and control pathways. The Delivery Man couldn’t help the ridiculous burst of optimism lightening his heart as he drew close to the two figures profiled by the harlequin glow of a deep city canyon on the other side of the plaza. It was almost symbolic of the moment, he thought, the two wildly different species finally coming together in the face of adversity. If only I wasn’t such a cynic.

Just as he reached them, he saw something move down the glimmering canyon beyond. Retinal inserts provided a clearer resolution. “No bloody way,” he grunted. It was a Silfen, riding some huge quadruped animal with thick scarlet fur. The Silfen himself was clad in a long, magnificently gaudy honey-colored coat decorated with thousands of jewels that sparkled energetically in the city’s luminosity.

“Gore!”

Gore turned around. “What?”

But it was too late. The Silfen had ridden off down an intersection. “Doesn’t matter.”

Tyzak had become very still. When the Delivery Man concentrated on his own diminutive awareness of the city’s thoughts, he could just make out another stream of consciousness out there somewhere. Like the city’s, these were precise and cool. Not quite aloof, though, for there was definite interest in why they had been roused.

“I feel you,” the elevation mechanism said. “You are Tyzak.”

“I am.”

“Do you wish to attain transcendence from your physical existence?”

“No.”

“I exist for that purpose.”

“I wish to transcend,” Gore told the mechanism.

“You are alien. I cannot help you.”

“Why not?”

“You are alien. I exist to lift Anomine to their next stage of life.”

“Our biochemistry is essentially the same. I am sentient. It would not be difficult for you.”

“No. Only Anomine may lift themselves through me.”

“Are you sentient?”

“I am aware.”

“There is a possibility that an event at the heart of the galaxy may destroy this planet and with it all the surviving Anomine. If I am elevated to the next stage of life, I will be able to prevent this from happening.”

“Should such an event occur, the remaining Anomine will be assisted to transcend if that is what they wish to become.”

“Do you still have the power to do that?”

“Yes.”

“And the rest of us? You would abandon every sentient in the galaxy to death?”

“I lift Anomine. I cannot reach the rest of the galaxy.”

“You can reach me.”

“You are not Anomine.”

“Are you unable to rise above your original constraints?”

“I am what I am. I exist to lift Anomine to their next stage of life.”

“Yeah. Got that.”

The elevation mechanism’s thoughts retreated, shrinking its consciousness back to the somnolence where it spent the centuries that passed it by.

“You were not given the answers you were hoping for,” Tyzak said. “I feel sorrow for you. But the machine’s story is an ancient one; it will not change now.”

“Yeah, I know. See you in the morning.” Gore rose to his feet and headed back to the Last Throw.

It took the Delivery Man by surprise. He got up and hurried after Gore, wishing in vain he didn’t feel like some pupil bobbing around his all-wise guru master. “So now what?”

The city’s shifting opalescence produced strange reflections across Gore’s golden face. If his expression did possess any emotion, it wasn’t anything the Delivery Man could read. “We got a pretty good functionality schema, which thankfully included a route into the wormhole when it checked its main power supply.”

“Ah. So you can hack it?”

“I don’t know. It’s extremely complex, which is what I expected from a machine which has its own psychology. But at least we know how to attempt it. There are physical junctions which are critical to its routines; they can be breached.”

“So are you going to start that now?”

“Certainly not. The other systems on this planet share an awareness of each other. I doubt I’d have more than a few minutes’ primacy before they put a stop to my evil alien incursion.”

“Oh, right. So we do need to reactivate the siphon first?”

“Siphon and wormhole. How long until the modified force field generators are finished?”

“A few days,” the Delivery Man said reluctantly.

“Good. We need to be ready to launch this part of the plan as soon as everyone in the Void is in place.”

“Everyone in the Void? You mean the Pilgrimage ships?”